extend it; with a firm resistance to all its encroachments on Northern rights; and above all, with an uncompromising hostility to all measures for introducing new slave states and new slave territories into our Union."

Not inappropriate here will be the following extract from the proceedings of the House of December the 21st, 1847:

"Mr. Jones, of Georgia, said: 'By whom had this war been. represented as unjust on the part of the United States? But by "few." Yet the opinions and denunciations of these persons had been extensively circulated, not only in the United States, but in Mexico. And who were they? The gentleman from Massachusetts had thought proper to rank himself among them; he had placed himself in that unfortunate category.'

"Mr. Winthrop. 'Does the honorable gentleman mean to assert that I placed myself there?'

"Mr. Jones. I understood him to place himself in that category, and that he had declared his right and that of all freemen to express their opinions.'

"Mr. Winthrop. 'Does he declare, in the face of this House, that he understood me to place myself in the predicament of attempting to circulate in Mexico-that's his accusation-declarations of the injustice and impropriety of the war?'

"Mr. Jones. 'I did not single out that part of the-'

"Mr. Winthrop. 'The honorable gentleman stated that explicitly. It is utterly unfounded-without the shadow of truth.' "Mr. Jones. I will tell the gentleman, if he will allow me, what I understood him to say, and he can not deny it with a shadow of truth. He characterized the portion of the message which I have read as an attempt, on the part of the President, to suppress discussion, and declared that, as a freeman, he should discuss freely the acts of the President. He spoke of the rights of freemen, and those which had descended from our Revolutionary fathers. Where then did he place himself?

presume that the honorable gentleman has not taken the pains to send his speeches to Mexico, although he may have had them circulated throughout the United States. But that is not the charge. The charge is that of assailing the administration as having brought on an unjust war-a war ag gressive in its character-a war on an injured enemy. Does the gentleman deny that he has assailed this war as unjust? Does he deny that he has characterized it as aggressive? Does

he deny that he has called it the President's war, and not the war of the country? He has not only by these declarations, but by the whole course and tenor of his argument, placed himself in the unfortunate category of extending "aid and comfort" to the enemy.'

"Mr. Winthrop. Will the gentleman allow me a single word?"

"Mr. Winthrop. The honorable member may impute to me whatever opinions he sees fit. I do not say that I do not think this war an unjust war; that I do not think this war to be an aggressive war; that I do not think this war to be a President's war, and not a war of the country; that I do not feel all the sentiments of abhorrence of this war which the President has imputed to the "few," but whom I choose to call the "many," as I believe they are, throughout this nation. But it does so happen-and the honorable gentleman from Georgia should have known the circumstances of the case before he assailed me-it does so happen, and it has been notorious to the whole country, that the charges in my own district, during the election which recently terminated in my re-election, have been, that I have refrained from denouncing this war; that I have refrained from expressing opinions which the honorable gentleman has now imputed to me; that I have not manifested the spirit exhibited in many other parts of my own commonwealth, and in many other parts of the country, quite so resolutely and uncompromisingly as my constituents could have desired; and although there may have been some parenthetical passages in my speech on the tariff, and other speeches, which the honorable member may see fit to charge as substantiating his posi tion, yet he will be obliged to resort to a microscope-to all the glasses and aids which philosophy or science will put within his reach, in order to discover those passages in any speech of mine which will give color even to the assertions which he has now made. Sir, I am the last member in this House on the Whig side who has subjected himself to the imputation which the President has seen fit to put forth; but, because I may not have done it heretofore, let me not be misunderstood-let me not be regarded as entertaining a different opinion from those who have done it to their hearts' content, and whom the Pres

ident has seen fit to charge in this utterly unjustifiable and arbitrary manner.'

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object has been that We are neither his stand in need of any

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In making these various extracts, our Mr. Winthrop should speak for himself. vindicators nor apologists. Nor does he feeble support which we can give him. Dissenting from some of his views, we still believe it would be a bright augury for the future destiny and the true glory of our common country—at the contemplation of whose prospective grandeur the vision almost aches-if our national councils contained a greater number of statesmen such as he is. He has witnessed and deplored the workings of that spirit of aggrandizement which, but recently, to use an expression of his own, was seen leaping over the Sabine in one quarter, and dashing itself upon the Rocky Mountains in another!" Looking to the habitual temper of our people, we can conceive of no higher exhibition of moral resolution in a representative than to raise his voice, amid a seeming clamor for war, in fervent invocations to Peace. We believe that the odium which attached to the opponents of the war of 1812, where principles were at issue that ought to have an abiding-place in the heart of every man worthy to be free, has affrighted from the exercise of their most honest judgments many of the public men of our day. The genius of our people, and especially of that portion which occupies the states composing our vast Western empire, is eminently warlike. Impatient of control, desirous of change, hankering after events, fond of excitement and adventure, they constitute material for military purposes not surpassed by any nation upon earth. The mild and beneficent spirit of our institutions, breathing forth from the sacred charter of our liberties, has hitherto kept this aspiring genius in check. But once give it rein-hold up to the admiring gaze of a young and chivalrous generation, as the worthier objects of its ambition, the trophies of conquest and the triumphs of arms, and who shall set bounds to our career of injustice, aggression, and rapacity? The past is full of solemn admonition. The magnificent domain on which we live is already felt, like a kingdom to the spirit of Perey, "too small a bound." The "manifest destiny" which, during the brief but troubled day of the 51° 40' dream, was impiously leading us no man knew whither, is not dead: it sleepeth only. At

that time, nothing short of a country, "ocean-bound," would contain us. The flag that "flouts the sky" on the dome of the Capitol was but one of those emblems of overshadowing power whose folds were to be given to the breeze alike on the summit of Cape Horn and at the extremity of Behring's Straits, where our eagles might perch, ready for a bolder and still loftier flight. Let us take warning ere it is too late. If the lessons of history can ever avail aught in shaping the destinies of nations, let them not be lost upon us. Let us see the future in the past, and "gather precious political truths amid the ruins of empires."

This memoir was prepared so far back as the month of August last. Mr. Clay, in the speech delivered by him at Lexington on the 13th of the following November, speculates, with much more ability than we can command, upon the effect produced at this day by the consequences visited upon those who arrayed themselves against the war of 1812. He says:

"The exceptionable conduct of the Federal party during the last British war has exerted an influence in the prosecution of the present war, and prevented the just discrimination between the two wars. That was a war of national defense, required for the vindication of the national rights and honor, and demanded by the indignant voice of the people. President Madison himself, I know, at first reluctantly, and with great doubt and hesitation, brought himself to the conviction that it ought to be declared. A leading, and, perhaps, the most influential member of his cabinet (Mr. Gallatin), was, up to the time of its declaration, opposed to it. But nothing could withstand the irresistible force of public sentiment. It was a just war, and its great object, as announced at the time, was 'Free Trade and Sailors' Rights,' against the intolerable and oppressive acts of British power on the ocean. The justice of the war, far from being denied or controverted, was admitted by the Federal party, which only questioned it on considerations of policy. Being deliberately and constitutionally declared, it was, I think, their duty to have given it their hearty co-operation. But the mass of them did not. They continued to oppose and thwart it, to discourage loans and enlistments, to deny the power of the general government to march the militia beyond our limits, and to hold a Hartford Convention, which, whatever were its VOL. I.-D D

real objects, bore the aspect of seeking a dissolution of the Union itself. They lost, and justly lost, the public confidence. But has not an apprehension of a similar fate, in a state of a case widely different, repressed a fearless expression of their real sentiments in some of our public men?"

During his service in Congress, Mr. Winthrop has been a member of three of the most important standing committees of the House on Commerce, on Foreign Affairs, and, more lately, of Ways and Means.

As the representative of the commercial city whose interests are more especially in his keeping, he merits all the praise that can be awarded to him. His unceasing efforts to preserve that protective policy with which the business pursuits of his state are so closely linked, are familiar to all.

With respect to the disputed matter of the naturalization laws, it is enough to say that he has favored such a revision of them as he believed necessary to correct existing abuses, and to maintain the purity of the ballot-box.

As the patron of the arts and sciences, of great national enterprises, and of all works connected with the history of the country, no member has been more conspicuous. The policy of internal improvement by the general government he has at all times sustained, as a cause which ought to rally to its support every real friend of the republic [see title, ROBERT M'CLELLAND]. Nor must we fail to notice the constancy with which he has voted to give to those private claimants, who so often appeal in vain to the justice of the nation, the benefit of the time which the rules of the House have set apart for the consideration of their business, and of his countenance and support, where their claims were of legitimate and proper obligation. We have referred to the general subject of the private calendar in another place.

His literary accomplishments have been indicated by numerous addresses and orations delivered upon various occasions, all of them of a high degree of excellence. Among them we should notice, as possessing peculiar merit, an address before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston upon the achievements and influence of Commerce, and an oration before the New England Society of the City of New York, at their annual celebration in 1839. The committee of the society, in requesting a